Tony's Diary Package — page 964

xe Still recovering from COVID. I had a rebound as indicated above after stopping my first course of Paxlovid. Have now finished my second course and my antigen positivity is very very slight. Hopefully it will disappear by tomorrow. Little by little going in the right direction. Important zoom meeting with Karl Lauterbach (Minister of health of Germany), Ugur Sahin (CEO, BioNTech) and Ashish Jha. We discussed the pros and cons of what the optimal booster would be in the fall. Carl and Ashish called upon Ugur and me to give the scientific rationale of why our FDA has come down on the side of recommending a BA.4/5 bivalent (with Wild type) boosts for the fall. Although it may take a little bit longer to get enough doses to start off early in the fall, the advantage of having a powerful BA.4/5 stimulus and response may be worth the slight delay. We also agreed that if we get a surge very early in the fall before we have enough BA/4/5, then we can actually boost with the ancestral monovalent since this does induce a reasonable response although not optimal against BA. 4/5. Karl mentioned that Germany had been leaning towards and omicron bivalence, particularly in the context that this is what Moderna has been pushing since that is what they have decided to make at risk and they don't want to lose the use of those dosages. At the end of the discussion it was clear that Ugur and I convinced Karl that the better direction to take would be as discussed above with BA. 4/5. It was a very good discussion and I came away impressed that Ugur is a brilliant scientist and seems to be a really nice person. Had my usual every two week zoom call with Chris Whitty of the UK. Chris and I have developed a very good relationship and we exchanged information about what is going on in the UK compared to what is going on here. They are unclear as to what boosts that they would use given the fact that they do not believe that they will have enough time to get enough BA. 4/5 boost made to meet a potential false surge we both agreed that if the surge comes early they can utilize the unused ancestral Wuhan vaccine that they have plenty of. PRESS: The New York Times (Shery Stolberg): Fauci says he believes Paxlovid kept him out of the hospital, even though he tested positive again. Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden's top pandemic adviser, sought to discourage doubts about the antiviral drug Paxlovid following what appeared to be a "rebound" of Covid-19 after taking the pills. July 1, 2022 Global - 543,352,927/6,331,059; USA - 87,298,343/1.012,767 Tested Ag negative today!!